What Others Say: Campus rape

The White House and Congress are filled with ideas to combat sexual assaults on campus.

A bipartisan Senate measure, introduced last week, would impose hefty fines on colleges that fail to report attacks to the federal government, require training for college staff and designate confidential advisers for students who report a rape.

Worthy proposals, perhaps, but they focus on what happens after someone is raped. More focus on prevention is needed, in particular on a binge-drinking culture that leaves students more vulnerable to sexual assault and makes cases harder to prosecute.

At least half of college students’ sexual assaults are associated with alcohol use. In one study, 74 percent of perpetrators and 55 percent of rape victims had been drinking.

Many recent cases that have generated attention involved students who were highly intoxicated, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness.

Yet even to discuss the linkage invites a fierce backlash — accusations of victim-blaming, of shifting the focus from perpetrators, or advancing a notion that women must curb their behavior instead of rapists curbing theirs.

Nonsense. When safety advocates warn drivers to buckle up, no one suggests that they are excusing drunken or reckless drivers who kill and maim.

To be clear, rape is a violent crime, not some “misunderstanding” that occurs because a woman is drunk. Victims are not at fault. Rapists should be arrested, tried, convicted and punished.

But the primary goal ought to be to do as much as possible to prevent rapes, not just handle them better afterward. This includes everything from training bystanders to spot and disrupt dangerous situations, a practice being tried on some campuses, to sharing uncomfortable facts.

One is that women and men metabolize alcohol differently. Alcohol can make men behave more aggressively. Its effect on motor skills can impair a woman’s ability to physically resist. Further, prosecutors are less likely to pursue ambiguous cases, particularly ones that involve no witnesses and victims who were too drunk to know what happened.

University of Virginia law professor Anne Coughlin, who studies the intersection of criminal law and feminist theory, has wrestled with this issue for years. Female students have told her: “It is your obligation as a feminist to give us the whole picture.”

To do otherwise is cruel and treats young women as if they are unable to handle the truth.

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